An accessible guide to the enduring struggle between people and power in the digital age

Egypt's January 25 Revolution of 2011 was a dramatic demonstration of the role social media has come to play in radical activism. A key moment was the appearance of the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said," which linked activists across the country. But how useful are social media in radical politics? And how readily can they be turned against the activists?

Revolution in the Age of Social Media looks at the role of that seminal Facebook page and the conspiracy theories that swirled around its administrator, Wael Ghonim. Herrera reveals the immense power struggles that took place in virtual arenas, showing how social media can serve not only as a site of liberation, but also as a place where powerful forces—such the US State Department, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Egyptian military—vie for control over the hearts and minds of the young.

The Egyptian uprising, while in many ways a distinctly Arab event, is also a universal story of power and insurrection in the age of social media.

Reviews

“Linda Herrera has written the best treatment of social media and contemporary politics that I have read. Her Revolution in the Age of Social Media avoids—indeed punctures—all of the clichés and inflated claims that tend to dominate this discussion. Herrera provides a
tremendous historical case study of the use and importance of social media in the Egyptian revolution of 2011. As she lived in Egypt for years through the revolution, Herrera provides insights I have never seen elsewhere. She provides a nuanced yet clear vision. All treatments of social media and politics going forward will go through this book.”

– Robert W. McChesney, author of Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

“Thus far the most readable and exacting account of the interstitial spaces between the street and internet in the Egyptian uprising … no stone is left unturned as Herrera offers an unwavering deconstruction of everything—from the simple messianism of Wael Ghonim to the conspiratorial obsession of Tariq Ramadan. I have no doubt this book will be an
instant classic.”

– Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University

“Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet, is expansive and curious.”

It has become popular today to say that we live in an era of what Benjamin Barber has labelled "Jihad vs. McWorld." The globalising powers of capitalism ("McWorld") are confronted with or resisted by the forces that Barber labels "Jihad" — the variety of tribal particularisms and "narrowly conceived faiths" opposed to the homogenising force of capital. Even those with a critical view of the growth of American empire and the expansion of what is erroneously termed the global market usually subscribe to this interpretation. In fact it is the critics who often argue that we need a better understanding of these local forms of resistance against the "universal" force of the market.

The terms of this debate are quite misleading. We live in an age, to adapt Barber’s nomenclature, of "McJihad." It is an age in which the mechanisms of what we call capitalism appear to operate, in certain critical instances, only by adopting the social force and moral authority of conservative Islamic movements. It may be true that we need a better understanding of the local forces that oppose the globalisation of capital; but, more than this, we need a better understanding of the so-called global forces of capital.